Azqueltán is a small settlement located on the banks of the

Bolaños River The Bolaños River is a river in Mexico flowing through the Sierra Madre Occidental, and a tributary of Rio Grande de Santiago. It has a length of 360 km and a watershed of about 10 000 square kilometers. Geography The river's origin is in t ...

in the municipality of Villa Guerrero,

Jalisco Jalisco (, , ; Nahuatl: Xalixco), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Jalisco ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Jalisco ; Nahuatl: Tlahtohcayotl Xalixco), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Federal En ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. "Azqueltán" (reduced from earlier "Atzqueltlán") means "land of many

ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22 ...

s" in the

Tepehuán language Tepehuán (Tepehuano) is the name of three closely related languages of the Piman branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, all spoken in northern Mexico. The language is called O'otham by its speakers. Northern Tepehuán Northern Tepehuán i ...

. According to

John Alden Mason John Alden Mason (January 14, 1885 – November 7, 1967) was an American archaeological anthropologist and linguist. Mason was born in Orland, Indiana, but grew up in Philadelphia's Germantown. He received his undergraduate degree from the Univ ...

, the village was originally settled by a group of indigenous

Tepehuán The Tepehuán are an indigenous people of Mexico. They live in Northwestern, Western, and some parts of North-Central Mexico. The indigenous Tepehuán language has three branches: Northern Tepehuan, Southeastern Tepehuan, Southwestern Tepehua ...

who migrated to the isolated canyon location in the 13th or 14th Century AD following droughts in the northern Sierra Madre Occidental and

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

during that time. In 1534, Spaniards arrived in the area and

Huichol The Huichol or Wixárika are an indigenous people of Mexico and the United States living in the Sierra Madre Occidental range in the states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Durango, as well as in the United States in the states of California, ...

groups settled in the surrounding areas, most likely as a result of Spanish incursion into their homelands to the east. In the eighteenth century, historically Tepehuán lands outside of the river-canyon were taken over by Spaniards and

Tlaxcaltec The Tlaxcalans, or Tlaxcaltecs, are a Nahua people who live in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala. Pre-Columbian history The Tlaxcaltecs were originally a conglomeration of three distinct ethnic groups who spoke Nahuatl, Otomi, and Pinome that compri ...

s brought to the region as colonizers by the Spaniards. While other historically Tepehuán settlements in the region, such as

Totatiche The municipality and town of Totatiche is located in the northern extreme of the state of Jalisco, Mexico between 21°48’30” and 22°06’00” latitude north and 103°20’00” and 103°34’00” longitude east at a height of above sea lev ...

and Temastián, lost their Tepehuán identity due to migration of the Spanish and Tlaxcaltecs, inhabitants of Azqueltán, isolated in the river-canyon, maintained their Tepehuán identity and

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

through the beginning of the 20th century. Traditionally, the people of Azqueltán and the divergent dialect of Southern Tepehuán once spoken at Azqueltán have been referred to as Tepecano. The

Tepecano language The Tepecano language is an extinct indigenous language of Mexico belonging to the Uto-Aztecan language-family. It was formerly spoken by a small group of people in Azqueltán (earlier Atzqueltlán), Jalisco, a small village on the Río Bola� ...

was studied during the period 1911-13 by Mason,J. Alden Mason, "Tepecano, a Piman Language of Western Mexico", ''Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences'', 25:1.309-416. and in 1965 and 1979-80 by Dennis Holt. In more recent years, some

inhabitants from the area west of the Sierra Madre Occidental have settled in the village.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Azqueltan, Jalisco Populated places in Jalisco